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[Reply #15 on:]

I had a crazy ides, comes in two flavors, IF you have an obstruct-able view of the pump shaft (s) "Dimple" them on one view able place and either fill the "Dimple" with black paint or one of those 'super' or 'rare earth' magnets I've seen and used commercially sold 1.5 X 1 mm rare earth magnets (get samples, as I did) and count motor RPM (s) after some relative total count (time) the tanks are full/empty and time becomes a manipulatable fraction of full/empty...  regardless of load (more or less) No?  IMO...

Doc

[Reply #16 on:]

2 barns, 10,000+ in each... yes it does keep me a "tad" busy ...
As to the sensor, I have checked it with various flow rates and it is accurate

Hi Cyberteque,

That's fantastic news, so glad the sensor is doing what you need it to. My wife and I fondly remember your part of the world, 13 wineries in one day over in McLaren Vale (hic!), a visit to the Lothlorien B&B over on Kangaroo island, among other activities. Beautiful part of the world.

I use a somewhat bigger water meter, a DLJ-100 because I was trying to keep flow restrictions to a minimum (this is off a cistern pump) and because flow rates can be in excess of 15GPM ~ 50l/min. The large vanes of the meter also have a hard time getting clogged with the minute amount of gunk that the pump does pass.

Some day when I have too much time, I'll bore the lot of you on how I built a filtration / backwash system with an Arduino controller to keep our drip irrigation system clear of clogging debris. Being the cheapie I am, I enjoyed fabricating all the PVC pipe / filters / etc. for a fraction of the cost that commercial systems retail for. Better yet, the pressure drop through the system is minimal, so the variable-speed SQE pump from Grundfos is happy. Now I only wash the filters once a year, when the season is over and I retire the filtration system from the outdoors to the shop. Plants are happy, wife is happy, so I am happy.

[Reply #17 on:]

Your water quality must be better than ours!
By the end of summer the iron deposits in our filters, taps, drinker cups is a pain!


I mainly wanted to sense "abnormal" flow, ie when the lovely birds, that I love so much and give my life purpose, knock a drinker cup off the line.
I can't post video or photos of that particular mess, but I can tell you that I didn't think turkeys were wading birds! ;-)

[Reply #18 on:]

Turkeys as far as the eye can see! Awesome.

Our cistern is filled with water from the roof as well as city water when we run low. We have some calcium carbonate issues but nothing that a dip in some white vinegar can't fix. Presumably, the acid in the rain up here helps dissolve the carbonate when it comes to the garden system, have yet to find a way to do it for the whole house...

Cheers! Constantin

[Reply #19 on:]

We use this REALLY nasty crap to clean and sanitise the drink lines.
30% hydrogen peroxide & 30% paracetic acid, will set fire to paper filters, burn your skin.

truly horrible stuff!